Kashoo Introduction

Kashoo was started for busy professionals that need accounting, but don’t need to spend a fortune on it. They offer the basic accounting features you would need, a basic inventory and a few tools to help get your business on track. If you need more complex features, you may find Kashoo too simple – but for under $13 per month and a free trial, it may be worth giving it a whirl.

An online accounting program designed to provide you with startup accounting.

Scoring and Rating

Accounting and Business Tasks: (Rating: 6/10)

Kashoo does track income and expenses, but you may feel a little overwhelmed doing that. You can input vendor bills and “pay” those bills in the system, but it is all manual input and you aren’t actually paying the vendor – so you will still have to physically pay someone.

You can sync Kashoo with your bank account to download transactions and then classify them.

The reports section of Kashoo is rather sparse – offering you up seven reports that are very basic and none necessarily help simplify taxes either.

Invoicing: (Rating: 6/10)

With Kashoo you can customize the invoice template – though they don’t make that easy to find. Their templates are so-so, but most programs don’t exactly boast an amazing selection anyway. You can also upload your own logo to customize your invoice further and add additional instructions to the invoice. They lack the follow up features other programs offer – like thank you emails for payments or automatic reminders.

You can print the invoice via PDF or email it right from the program.

I wasn’t impressed with the overall process for making invoices in Kashoo. It’s very clunky and unnecessarily confusing. You cannot quickly find your invoices. Instead you have to go to Income, then Invoices, then scroll to the bottom of the “quick input” to find your list of invoices, then click on the invoice you want to look at and then edit it. Other programs make this much easier.

You can’t accept payments with Kashoo though. All you can do is enter them into the system. Instead, Kashoo will tell you to integrate with Freshbooks API to collect payments – but what is the point of adding yet another accounting program? By then you might as well just use FreshBooks and scrap Kashoo altogether.

There are also no estimates with Kashoo. This is something they really need to add because most business professionals at least need the ability to send an estimate or quote to their clients. There is also no recurring billing. You can support multiple tax rates and currencies – so that is refreshing. Overall, their invoicing needs some serious upgrades and work.

Management: (Rating: 6/10)

Management is extremely limited with Kashoo – almost non-existent. While they do have an inventory option, it is very basic. You simply input the product and whether you buy or sell it, how much it costs, etc. You can’t physically track inventory counts – which is something people may need.

You can add customers and vendors and track them in Kashoo, but it doesn’t have the more unique features that other programs offer – like the ability to show how much income per client you are receiving, recent history, outstanding balances, etc.

There is no employee management. While they have a payroll option on the menu, you will click on that and be directed to outsource your payroll to Paychex.

Ease of Use: (Rating: 5/10)

I wasn’t impressed with Kashoo’s design or their interface. It’s not intuitive and the way you setup invoices, payments, etc. is so confusing and unnecessary. It’s very basic and you don’t have much customization with your account in the first place.

When you first create your account, they do have a get started guide that pops up and you can watch it for step-by-step instructions on setting up your account. This is great, but it doesn’t make up for their poor design and features. Creating and printing invoices is almost archaic compared to other programs and you feel as though you are doing nothing but inputting. The purpose of accounting software is to simplify – not create more work. While I was testing out Kashoo, I felt as though nothing was simplified and instead I was doing all the inputting and wondered if it would ever end.

If they changed up their design and possibly automated a few more processes – or at least upgraded their overall software – they could certainly improve the overall user experience.

Access: (Rating: 7/10)

Kashoo is cloud-based, so you can access it technically from any device with an internet connection. They also have mobile apps available in the Apple Store and Google Play. But, it should be noted that the Google Play app is rated at 2.5 stars and most people complain it doesn’t work or has limited functionality. On the Apple Store the mobile app is rated low too.

There is just one user per Kashoo account, so to send your information to an accountant you would need to export the data or send them a profit and loss statement.

Taxes: (Rating: 5/10)

There are some tax features, but they don’t really offer you much. For example, you can add your sales tax information and track it on invoices, but you cannot estimate quarterly tax payments, business taxes, etc. They have no tax prep assistance and you cannot file business taxes. Because there is no payroll offered through Kashoo, you can’t do payroll taxes either.

There’s no accountant access, so you will be limited in ways you can send your files to your accountant – most likely, you’ll have to download and send the exported file.

Pricing: (Rating: 7/10)

Kashoo is affordable, but when you compare their features to other companies, you can get more features for less elsewhere.

There is a 14-day free trial with Kashoo and after that you will pay $12.95 per month. If you opt for annual payments, you can pay $129.99 per year and save about $25.

There are no contracts, so even if you pay for annual you can cancel at any time.

Customer Service: (Rating: 7/10)

There isn’t much help with Kashoo and when I tried to navigate through them I found myself having to Google search more than use their own in-house guides – a little disappointing. They do have a Kashoo U for better business practices and customer support. Support is available by phone Monday through Friday from 6am to 5pm PST and via email. You can also submit a help ticket.

Kashoo’s knowledgebase is extremely confusing and the overall setup poor. They don’t have a good organization to their articles what-so-ever.

Payroll

Platforms Supported

Mobile

Help and Support

What Type of Business Could Use This Software?

Kashoo is very limited and therefore they are best for businesses with just one employee or freelancers. But, because they lack the tax assistance most freelancers need (such as categories set up for Schedule C and estimated quarterly tax payments), most freelancers won’t be able to use them either. Ultimately, a small service-oriented business could benefit from Kashoo and their affordable pricing, but if they have more robust inventory needs or tax needs, they may find Kashoo falls short.

What We Like About Kashoo

Change Log: This is a cool feature. You can actually check out to see what you have done – down right to the date and time you changed an invoice and what you did to that invoice. You can then click on that highlighted portion and visit the page where the editing took place – to make additional changes. Probably a wasted feature since you cannot add users to your Kashoo, but still worth noting.

Check Printing: This is a neat feature. You can actually print checks from your Kashoo account. You will add the date and template for your check, the payment information and you can print them. Then, you will be able to add them to your expenses.

What We Don't Like About Kashoo

Poor Dashboard Design: When you compare the dash on Kashoo to other programs, Kashoo needs some serious improvements. It’s ugly, clunky, and confusing. They have everything on one side, which is convenient, but their quick inputs are not impressive and the way they have inputs set up in general are very confusing.

Refers You to FreshBooks: Kashoo doesn’t have a lot of features and the ones they are lacking they direct you to link your account to FreshBooks. While this is great they’ve partnered up, FreshBooks offers everything Kashoo lacks and more – making it ideal to just switch to FreshBooks and leave Kashoo behind.

Too Much Inputting: While using Kashoo, I felt as though all I did was input or back track and then input again. By no means did I feel as though Kashoo simplified my finances.

No Estimates or Quotes: Kashoo doesn’t offer estimates or quotes. For most companies, this is a must-have so not having access to it could be a problem.

No Time Tracking or Timesheets: Kashoo also doesn’t have timesheets or any way to track time – so business owners would have to track time elsewhere and then import it into the system for their invoices – again, adding to how much inputting is required.

Shailynn is a word slinger, chef, Pinterest addict and adult coloring book collector. As our Operations Manager and Senior Researcher/Editor, you will find Shailynn busy finding new companies and topics to research, but also handling the crazy day-to-day on the backend – and by crazy…we mean all of us.
She attended the International Culinary Institute, where she studied pastry arts and she worked as an executive pastry chef before hanging up her chef’s hat and decided to work from home as a writer. She is a fanatic for a great cup of coffee or wonderful glass of wine!
Shailynn is a mother of three and married to a handsome firefighter.